Vista - Hmmm...

Interesting, if true...

OpenGL Now Natively Supported in Windows Vista
Posted by Enan Hawk 3 hours ago · There are 20 comments & 9 trackbacks

The reason why OpenGL was not ever officially supported by Microsoft was
because of Direct3D. Direct3D is Microsoft's driver model whichis intended
to make OpenGL unnecessary. However many games and applications use OpenGL
even today. With Windows Vista, Microsoft made it clear that OpenGL support
would only work as a layer sitting on top of Direct3D. There was going to be
translation involved and thus, a performance hit.

This week the Khronos group, which is responsible for developing and
maintaining OpenGL, has released a report indicating that OpenGL support
will now be natively supported in Vista without layering over Direct3D.
Using standard Windows installable client driver (ICD), OpenGL will be fully
accelerated and be fully compatible with Windows Vista's Aeroglass UI. In
fact, Khronos says that by the time Windows Vista ships, Aeroglass
performance on OpenGL will be superior to that of Direct3D. According to
Khronos and NVIDIA:

a.. Hardware overlays are not supported
b.. Hardware OpenGL overlays are an obsolete feature on Vista
c.. ATI and NVIDIA strongly recommend using compositing desktop/FBOs for
same functionality
However, the OpenGL ICD drivers must still bedownloaded and will not ship on
the Windows Vista installation disc. Khronos said that NVIDIA already has a
beta 2 ICD OpenGL driver available and ATI will release its own soon. If no
ICD is present, Windows Vista will rely on thelayered OpenGL mode by default
and only offer basic functionality.

News source: DailyTech